I can tell what it is not. an RPG is not statistics, levels and shit.
It is taking up a role. cRPGs (computer rpgs) have almost nothing to do with real RPGs. I mean, sure, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment. These were good attempts of making an RPG on the screen. But there just a few among many games labeled "RPG". Played Diablo? If that's an RPG then you can just as well call an RPG about ANY other game. Cause you take up a role in every game. This makes, I dunno, Pacman an RPG. Or even Tetris (look, man. I'm a brick. No, a shitload of bricks).

Real RPGs are without using a computer. You can have an RPG without totally anything.
So we have two understandings ofRPG here: a narrow one and the wide one. The wide one makes RPG just about anything that's a game. In this sense KS is an RPG (So is Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Tekken bla bla bla). in the narrow sense tough, it is not.

I don't think using the word"RPG" anywhere near KS is a good idea.

It's just my opinion, please don't point me as a dude that's forcing some kind of TRUTH to you.

^Truth

Nowadays "RPG elements" in a game means that it has levels and stats and skills and awesome shit like that, not that it has any capability for roleplaying. Sigh.
An example of an RPG can be seen in the on-going KS RP thread. As far as I've noticed they (you?) are using stats mostly in situations that require them to prevent miraculous dodges and all that shit that players start doing if you give them too much freedom. Basically, enforcing rules similar to circumstances of the real world. Not having stats just for the sake of having stats.

A VN is a novel/game hybrid to me. It's essentially a novel but with gameplay. Not controlling the character or anything but choosing your path. How many times do you see the MC in a book and say, "Well I would have done it like this"? A VN gives you the chance to follow a story but be able to intervene and have the MC do what you would do. This creates a new level of interaction that gives the reader (notice not the player but the reader) a chance to shape the story how they like. Having a level of control is what makes a VN great.

I've been thinking about this some more and got a couple of ideas. There are several different perspectives to consider here; The analytical one, the consumer one, and the developer one. The first has been covered extensively in this thread, so I'll say no more about it. But I think in the end, the other two matter more, and the consumer one more than the developer one at that.

So, do consumers really think VNs are games, completely regardless whether SCIENCE SAYS THEY ARE/ARE NOT? Sure enough, they often get referred to as such and people tend to say "playing" a VN over "reading" a VN. But in my opinion, this is more force of habit than anything. I don't think anyone would think "I'd like to play a video game, time for some Clannad." VNs are not interchangeable with regular video games, the experience is just too different, and they appeal to very different audiences too (and yes, I am looking forward to "I like video games AND VNs so you're wrong" comments). If they have to be referred to as games, they are definitely an edge case to the point where it makes more sense to view them as a medium of their own rather than lump them together with games.

Likewise for developers; I don't VN developers try to design a game first and foremost, and if they do you get a hybrid of games and VNs. I don't think game developers and VN developers overlap much outside of Hideo Kojima, and he would probably best be classified under "easter egg compiler" at this point.

So while VNs may or may not be in fact games, the bigger question is "is it useful to anyone to automatically group them with games?", and I don't think so.

Seriously, do a word count comparison between, say, War and Peace, the projected word count of KS, and the word count of almost any computer game you can name. Even throw in spoken dialog if you want. There are so many computer games out there I'm sure someone can easily come up with some good ones (What about some of those old school text based MUD games?). That ought to be a good point to start to compare from. Try and get a relatively comparable set, and then figure out where the differences really are, is one way to approach it.

2xGPU clients (GTX 465/GTS 250); 2xCPU clients

<Aura> Our army of teenage girl artists couldn't draw penises without fits of giggling. Does that count?

I'm coming to this discussion rather late, but one thing that I think bears mentioning is that we in the West used to have a thriving visual novel scene ourselves. It died out in the 1990s after being superceded by the Point-And-Click Adventure, but throughout the 1970s and 1980s the Text Adventure - which acquired pictures and illustrations quite quickly - was a staple part of English-speaking gaming, with companies like Infocom and Level 9 being pretty prominent figures. Text Adventures weren't certainly considered different from videogames in our historical experience, being featured in gaming magazines and held to be entirely conventional in conversation.

Although rather than providing clarity, this might complicate matters further because while there were linear text adventures a lot also had interactive qualities as well, particularly in exploration and object manipulation (GO NORTH, GIVE GEM TO GOBLIN, TAKE SPOON, "It is very dark. You might be eaten by a Grue!" etc.), but nonetheless many were concerned with achieving a specific narrative.

There was a young clerk who took exception to Curzon's memorandum. He thought it was balls. But he was afraid to say so directly, so he scratched faintly in the margin, 'Round Objects'. Lord Curzon replied in a note: "Who is Mr. Round, and why does he object?"
-Sir Alan Lascelles

I can tell what it is not. an RPG is not statistics, levels and shit.
It is taking up a role. cRPGs (computer rpgs) have almost nothing to do with real RPGs. I mean, sure, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment. These were good attempts of making an RPG on the screen. But there just a few among many games labeled "RPG". Played Diablo? If that's an RPG then you can just as well call an RPG about ANY other game. Cause you take up a role in every game. This makes, I dunno, Pacman an RPG. Or even Tetris (look, man. I'm a brick. No, a shitload of bricks).

Real RPGs are without using a computer. You can have an RPG without totally anything.
So we have two understandings ofRPG here: a narrow one and the wide one. The wide one makes RPG just about anything that's a game. In this sense KS is an RPG (So is Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Tekken bla bla bla). in the narrow sense tough, it is not.

I don't think using the word"RPG" anywhere near KS is a good idea.

It's just my opinion, please don't point me as a dude that's forcing some kind of TRUTH to you.

This definition is outdated and inaccurate. It used to be true, it is no longer true. You can insist that the old definition is still the only right one, and that the new definition is bullshit, but you're going to be disregarded as a loon if you do. It's not constructive, interesting, or intelligent.

If I were asked to define RPGs as they are today, I would say something like "games using numerical representations of character attributes, which can be increased, often with a level-based system, and an emphasis on story. These games tend towards the use of menus, cutscenes, and parties of multiple characters under direct or indirect control of the player." I could go on! The modern RPG is a vast genre and I honestly doubt my ability to express its unique properties. My attempt to do so is actually pretty bad, but I still hold it in higher esteem than yours, since your should be prefaced with "back in MY day."

Diablo is an RPG. Tales of Vesperia is an (J)RPG. Kingdom Hearts is an ARPG. Each of those games is pretty crazy different, but I consider them all RPGs.

And who made the "new definition"? You? game developers?
Your definition makes Pokemon an RPG. Heck, it possibly makes Hogs of War an RPG too. or Starcraft or Warcraft (gah, numerical statistics, story, levels [levels not in the strict term as character lv 1 then 2 etc but.. it's a material for a little longer talk] it all fits)

It's like saying that potatoes were in Europe all the time, forgetting that they came from America.

Diablo is a cRPG. not an RPG. c stands for computer. I think that the bag labeled "cRPG" has inside many so-called RPGs in it.
Did you just say "Back of, gramps, modern times changed language, deal with it"?

Smoku wrote:Diablo is a cRPG. not an RPG. c stands for computer. I think that the bag labeled "cRPG" has inside many so-called RPGs in it.
Did you just say "Back of, gramps, modern times changed language, deal with it"?

For me, the whether a game is a RPG or something else depends not so much on game mechanics as on identifaication with the protagonist, and that depends a lot on the person playing the game.
If you play Dragon Age without paying attention to the story and just trying to increase your stats, then you're not playing a RPG - what's left is little more than Hack & Slash. On the other hand there are several Adventures that manage to create quite a lot of RPG-feeling.
On the gripping hand, while it might be possible to get into character in games like Crysis, some genres simply do not lend themselves to be played as RPGs.
All of this is my personal opinion, not backed by science of any sort.
And it doesn't help the discussion either - as long as it is not clear whether KS is even a game, the question "RP or not RP" is kind of moot.

In the end isn't the goal to entertain people; to engage their minds and emotions in a story for a little while. If it doesn't do that, it is a failure no matter what definition is applied, art drawn, music created, dialogue written, or engine coded.

2xGPU clients (GTX 465/GTS 250); 2xCPU clients

<Aura> Our army of teenage girl artists couldn't draw penises without fits of giggling. Does that count?

also, do other types of visual texts exist other than visual novels? Like visual textbooks, visual cookbooks, visual dictionaries, visual encyclopedos, visual diaries? It would be pretty lame to put some of these on a computer or even a laptop, but on a pad device they could work.

There's not any actual problem - Creative Commons licenses just aren't very good for "copyleft" purposes(eg, you can just distribute the compiled binary and still apply a CC license to it). The MIT and BSD licenses aren't much different, in that respect, and they get used all the time. Since it's written in Python and being distributed under ND, it really doesn't matter.